Canzoni Natalw Piccoli

This is the fifth and final volume in the Ligia series of the complete keyboard music of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1583–1643). Previous volumes reviewed in Fanfare include the Primo libro di capricci and Secondo libro di toccate (both 34:2), and the Primo libro di toccate (34:6). The present volume includes published collections from the beginning, middle, and end of Frescobaldi’s career. The Primo libro delle fantasie was published while the composer was still in Milan; it served as a kind of audition piece that eventually won him the position of organist at St. Peter’s in Rome.

This is a significant recording for several reasons. Sergio Vartolo has now recorded all of Frescobaldi’s keyboard music (the other issues were on the Tactus label). The Fantasie (1608) and Ricercari (1615) are the earliest of Frescobaldi’s keyboard publications (the latter being issued in the same year as the more famous first book of Toccatas), and as far as I’m aware neither had been issued complete before; so to get both together, and at super-budget price, is treasure-trove indeed. Frescobaldi fanatics need read no further. (Gramophone)

Gabrieli's music, written for a comparatively large ensemble of cornetts, sackbuts (= trombones), dulcian, violins, viola and organ (and in one instance for theorbo), is some of the earliest that can be considered "orchestral", although the use of cornetts and trombones makes it sound, in the main, a bit like music for brass band! The pieces appear to be instrumental developments from earlier vocal compositions (thus the title "Canzone", derived from the word for song) and reflect the situation at St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice, where groups of singers or instrumentalists were placed at various points within the church building to create what we might today call a "surround" effect.